This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.

This is something I've been wanting to do with BeOS (and later Haiku) for many years now. The problem is, I'm a crappy programmer. I can build an interface in a visual IDE, and I can code simple scripts in scripting languages, but anything lower level than Python, Javascript, Tcl/Tk, PHP or Bash is beyond my abilities.

Hell, it took me three days to make a custom MP3 player in VisualBasic 6 back in college, that would have taken your average high schooler less than two hours. Granted, a solid day was wasted fine-tuning the custom graphical buttons and controls (I was all about skeuomorphism in 2001), but a true ICE interface with all the bells and whistles is far beyond my abilities.

Still, I would love to see one of the big car audio companies embrace Haiku the way the TuneTracker folks have. I think Haiku is the perfect platform for any multimedia-heavy project, and given its open source nature it is much easier from a licensing standpoint.